What it looks like when a country lifts the child out of the basement.

Five months after winning a civil war, President José Figueres Ferrer held a public ceremony at the Cuartel Bellavista barracks, took a sledgehammer to the wall, and declared the Costa Rican army permanently abolished. The 1949 Constitution made it law: "The Army as a permanent institution is abolished. There shall be the necessary police forces for surveillance and the preservation of public order."

The military budget was redirected to education and healthcare. By 2009 Costa Rica was spending 6.3% of GDP on education and 7.0% on health. Today:

• Life expectancy at birth: ~81 years — higher than the United States — at roughly one-fifth the US GDP per capita.
• Only Latin American country to never experience a successful military coup since 1948.
• UNESCO Memory of the World inscribed the 1948 proclamation in 2017.

Primary: UNESCO Memory of the World — Proclamation of the Abolition of the Army (Costa Rica); Article 12 of the 1949 Constitution.

When Norway found oil in the North Sea, it could have done what most petrostates do: spend the windfall, inflate, and crash. Instead, it built the Government Pension Fund Global — a sovereign-wealth fund into which all petroleum revenue flows. By law, only the expected real return (roughly 3%/year) may be drawn into the annual budget. Everything else is invested in international assets on behalf of present and future Norwegians.

• Fund value end-2024: NOK 19.7 trillion (~$1.75 trillion USD).
• ~$2.2 trillion by April 2025 — the world's largest sovereign-wealth fund, owning ~1.5% of all listed equities globally.
• Life expectancy 83+ years; ~0.4% of population in poverty (vs ~1.8% in the US).
• Resource wealth saved for the population, not captured by a small elite — the explicit policy choice.

Primary: Norges Bank Investment Management, Annual Report 2024.

In October 2008, all three major Icelandic banks collapsed. The country chose a different response from the rest of the developed world. It let the banks fail rather than fully bailing them out. It commissioned a nine-volume independent investigation (the Hreinsson Report, 2010). It established a dedicated Office of the Special Prosecutor with the explicit mandate to pursue criminal cases tied to the collapse.

• Special Prosecutor's Office handled 806 cases between 2009 and 2015; 208 directly tied to the 2008 crisis.
• Convictions included the CEO and Chairman of Kaupthing Bank (Iceland's largest), upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court in February 2015. Sentences: 4 to 5.5 years.
• Six of seven banker cases reaching the Supreme Court were upheld.
• Iceland's GDP returned to pre-crisis levels by 2014 — faster than the eurozone average. Unemployment fell from ~9.3% (2010) to ~4% (2015).

The empirical point is not "punish capitalism" — it is that an alternative response to financial crisis existed, was tried at the national scale, and produced a faster recovery than the bail-everyone-out approach used elsewhere.

Primary: Special Investigation Commission of Iceland — Report on the Causes of the Collapse of the Icelandic Banks in 2008 (Hreinsson Report, 2010, English summary); RTÉ News, 'Iceland's Supreme Court upholds banker convictions' (Feb 2015).

Bhutan is the only country whose constitution names something other than GDP as the explicit policy objective. The 2008 Constitution, Article 9, instructs the State "to promote those conditions that will enable the pursuit of Gross National Happiness." The Planning Commission was renamed the GNH Commission. Policy proposals are screened against a measurable wellbeing index of 4 pillars, 9 domains, 33 clustered indicators, and 124 variables — psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity, governance, community vitality, ecological diversity, and living standards.

Bhutan is a small country, and its GDP per capita is modest. The case is not "Bhutan is rich." The case is institutional: an alternative objective function for national policy can be encoded, measured, and enforced. The Bhutanese forest-cover floor (Article 5(3): never below 60% — currently ~70%) is a concrete example. Bhutan is also the only carbon-negative country on record.

Primary: Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, 2008; Ura, K., Alkire, S., Zangmo, T. (2012) 'GNH and GNH Index', Centre for Bhutan Studies / OPHI working paper.

At independence in 1968, Mauritius was a sugar-monoculture island with ~$240 GDP per capita and few obvious economic prospects. Nobel laureate James Meade famously predicted economic disaster. Instead, successive governments diversified into textiles, tourism, financial services, and ICT, while keeping universal free education, free healthcare, and a substantive welfare state intact throughout.

• GDP per capita: ~$240 (1968) → ~$10,400 (2024) (current USD). Upper-middle-income status since the 1990s.
• Life expectancy: ~62 (1968) → ~74+ (2024).
• Literacy: ~60% (1968) → ~95% (2024).
• No coup, no civil war, no debt crisis.

The case refutes a specific bargain: "you must dismantle the welfare state to develop." Mauritius did the opposite, and developed faster.

Primary: Subramanian, A. & Roy, D. (2001), 'Who Can Explain the Mauritian Miracle? Meade, Romer, Sachs, or Rodrik?' IMF Working Paper 01/116; Frankel, J. (2010) 'Mauritius: African Success Story', NBER WP 16569.